Jouvay: The Rising S u n Design for m u r a l Sagicor Building, Queen’s Park Savannah, Por t of S p a i n Acr ylic on paper, cut out and col l a g e d 10.75” x 2 6 ” ©1991
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MINSHALL MISCELLANY
Jouvay: The Rising Sun is the design for
To create the design artwork, Minshall
a mural commissioned by Barbados Mutual
went
insurance company, now Sagicor, for their
creating his own range of coloured paper for
Port of Spain headquarters on the western
collage. Since the image was to be executed
edge of the Queens Park Savannah. Minshall
inch by inch, in an array of individual “tiles,”
approached the design for the mural the way
he deployed a paint-splatter technique using
he would approach the design for a king mas:
stiff-bristled toothbrushes to create washes
start with the engineering and the structure,
of colour comprised of tiny dots of paint, each
which then informs the design and the
dot to represent a mosaic square. From this
decoration.
stock of pointillist colours he meticulously cut
Combining references from the art form of
out and collaged the three hummingbirds,
mural design as well as from his own work in
bougainvillea, hibiscus, and foliage, each
the mas, Minshall conceived a mural that would
edged in gold, applied against a joyful palette
use a mosaic technique to display a detailed
of sunrise. With these techniques, the artist
image, but a mosaic that would be light and
packed an extraordinary amount of precise
alive, dancing like a mas, not cemented into
detail into the 11” x 26” artwork. The completed
place. Unlike ceramic tile mosaic, these “tiles”
mural, installed in the building’s atrium, features
would be one-inch squares of translucent
over 140,000 squares of coloured film, each
plastic (the coloured “gel” film used in theatrical
corresponding to a tiny dot of paint in the
lighting),
original artwork.
dangling
from
plastic
fasteners
through
a
painstaking
process
of
(“shot” on with fastener “guns,” used to fasten
tags onto clothing). These tiles would hang
remarkably as fresh as the day it was finished
from a grid of vertical tapes stretched taught
in early 1992. It faces the rising sun in the east.
the entire fifty-two foot height of the building’s
As air currents pass over the surface of the
atrium. (The related piece in this exhibition,
mural, the hanging mosaic tiles rustle gently,
Dancing Mosaic Hummingbird, is a mock-up
giving the mural image a continual shimmer
of the construction technique for the mural.)
and dance.
The
mural
remains
in
place
Dancing Mosaic Hummingbird S t u d y f o r mural design: “Jouvay: The Rising Sun” P o l y e s t e r plastic film, plastic fasteners, cloth tape 36” x 36” ©1991
today,
MINSHALL MISCELLANY
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